Board used in the construction of floors, walls and ceilings are composed of a wide variety of materials, and designed to be joined in wide variety of ways. Floor boards are often made of composite material including multiple layers of different materials. Floor boards are also joined to one another by a wide variety of structures and techniques, including standard tongue and groove connections and more complex and easy-to-use systems that employ adhesives and adhesive tape, snapping connections incorporated into board edges, angling board with interlocking edges, and overlapping edges. Many of the edges are specially designed to achieve objectives relating to strength, minimum visibility of the joint, prevention of ingress of water and dirt, durability, low cost of production and many others objectives.
In the case of flooring, there are two systems of vinyl floating floors that are currently the available in the market. These are systems in which locking tongues and locking grooves are machined into the edges of the sheet comprising the flooring board, much like typical laminate flooring of the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,486 and patents related thereto. Problems with this system include the fact that in order to have sufficient room to form a machined vinyl locking tongue and locking groove on opposite edges of the board, the board is required to be quite thick, and vinyl itself is a relatively flexible and deformable material, not well-suited for creating a strong mechanical connection. Another system relies on adhesive strips applied to the underside of adjacent panels. This system is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,155,871 and 7,322,159. However, these systems do not provide a mechanical connection between boards, they cannot be readily disassembled, and are difficult to install, because once a board is placed on the joining adhesive strip, it is difficult to re-locate.